The Longest Year in Human History (46 B.C.E.)
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended as an entertaining and well-explained account of why our calendar looks the way it does.
What it is
Historia Civilis tells the story of 46 BCE, the 445-day year in which Julius Caesar reformed the Roman calendar. It covers the political context, including the civil war, Cato and Cicero.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2021 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Recommends shagie · 2022-04 · on “3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work”
The Longest Year in Human History (46 B.C.E.) - [this video] gets into the "why the year we have is designed the way it is" ... though it takes 22 minutes to get to that part. It wasn't really better as the 30 * 12 + 5 approach needed manual application of the + 5... which is what the new calendar was trying to avoid.
Recommends comeonbro · 2022-09 · on “Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar”
I didn't appreciate until recently that the calendar we live by today was personally designed by Julius Caesar. Like not by some forgotten technocrats incidentally during his time, but Julius Caesar himself as a subject matter expert, as a side-project. With consultation, certainly, but by his initiative, from long-standing engagement with the problem in one of his early jobs from long before he was a main character of the Roman story. Digestable and entertaining (fragment of a) video on the topic: [this video]
Recommends hr0m · 2024-02 · on “Julius Caesar's Year of Confusion”
Ha, a proof that by watching YouTube videos you learn something. This was covered by one of my favorite series on YouTube. Here is the particular video: [this video]
Recommends j-bos · 2024-02 · on “Julius Caesar's Year of Confusion”
Historia Civilis has a great video explaining how Caeser used the longest year to his advantage in war: [this video]
Cites gopalv · 2021-08 · on “Leap Smear”
> Why don’t we use TAI or GPS time for generic world wide coordinated computer time? I think that is valid as long as systems are talking to systems, but the interface with the world (when things are happening in the world) is where the solar day or year is still relevant. I'm sort of joking, but watching Interstellar made me kinda cringe about what interstellar gravity wells is going to do to time-keeping, even if we use something like an atomic clock to keep time. We will slowly get better at this until we discover something new, but the switch doesn't mean anything until the costs outweigh the change. And the leap second is going look like 46-45 BCE[1]. [1] - [this video]